A man gives up civilization in the 1840s and heads for the Rocky Mountains with the intention of living the life of a lone hunter and trapper.
What an unpromising premise. It can so easily get boring, seeing one guy trying to cope with the vicissitudes of a majestic but harsh and unforgiving environment, and occasional brief encounters with other humans, half of them determined to kill him. (All but two of the other half are indifferent.) I couldn't do it.
A story like this can so easily go wrong, as it did in "Castaway", for instance. But with the help of the extraordinarily popular and handsome Robert Redford, the movie makers manage to pull it off. There's hardly a dull moment.
Nothing comes off quite as expected. At first, Redford knows nothing about survival in the wilderness. Finally he is taken in for a short spell by an old grizzly hunter, Will Geer, from whom he learns the rudiments of getting along from one day to the next.
The movie of course depends on Redford. Despite his personal attraction to the mountains of Utah, it seems like a poor choice because he's a minimalist actor, releasing whole gigabytes of information with a roll of his eyes. And the director, Sidney Pollack, a master of urban Angst, expects us to become involved with this guy? But Redford's cool actually makes the film more interesting in that, through his very reticence, he introduces an element of simultaneous contrast with the events going on around him. He proves to be a good physical actor, but he's almost a hole in the story, being to the movie as a whole, what the pupil is to an attractive eyeball.
Redford is no hero here, mostly just an ordinary neurotic who's trying to forget the (Mexican-American) war. Most of the time his handsome features are hidden by a full beard. There are only two expectable genre conventions. One is that he keeps killing Crow Indians as they attack him one by one and, though often wounded, he's always the victor. The second is that he mistakenly enters into a marriage with a Flathead (or Salish) woman and is forced by circumstance to adopt a mute white boy. There is the simulacrum of a family then. After they get to know one another a bit, they play field hockey together. (Ho hum, says the savvy viewer.) But they're lost to him because he chooses to aid some stranded white folks, so he's left on his own again. The ending is ambiguous. It's not clear how Redford turns out. If he survives the continuous Crow attacks, he might well end up as savage and bitter as the animals he kills. A different, and equally realistic description of the life of a trapper, can be found in A. B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky" -- the novel, not the movie.
There's a surprising amount of humor. Well -- ANY humor in the story of a man traipsing by himself through the wilderness is liable to be surprising. But, really, running across a guy buried to his neck in the soil? Claiming he is still sitting on his buried horse? Pollack, thank God, doesn't really go in for the easy shots. Aside from hiding Redford's features, the director manages to avoid having him strip off his shirt to take a swim. (Imagine Sylvester Stallone in the part.) Redford and his non-English-speaking wife have a friendly but sharp exchange, like the Flintstones. After lengthy periods of isolation, when a friend shows up in the distance, they don't greet each other warmly. They don't greet each other at all. Neither do they say good-bye. When they decide to split up, one says, "I think I'll go to Canada." The other says, "Keep your hair," and rides off shouting gibberish to himself. The Indians are treated fairly. After Redford has just slaughtered four or five of the Crow who have murdered his family, he corners the last one, who begins singing his death song. Redford crouches over him with his knife, eyes darting around, then shuffles off without killing him. There are some fights but they're realistic -- mano a mano, and short. Nobody dangles from a cliff, let alone from a skyscraper. We don't see two bodies struggling under the water. None of the violence is in fashionable slow motion. Pollack exercises a good deal of restraint.
There seems also to be a good deal of social comment -- on human nature, on the Vietnam war -- but there's not enough space to get into it. And I'm not sure I could interpret it all that accurately.
Worth seeing.
What an unpromising premise. It can so easily get boring, seeing one guy trying to cope with the vicissitudes of a majestic but harsh and unforgiving environment, and occasional brief encounters with other humans, half of them determined to kill him. (All but two of the other half are indifferent.) I couldn't do it.
A story like this can so easily go wrong, as it did in "Castaway", for instance. But with the help of the extraordinarily popular and handsome Robert Redford, the movie makers manage to pull it off. There's hardly a dull moment.
Nothing comes off quite as expected. At first, Redford knows nothing about survival in the wilderness. Finally he is taken in for a short spell by an old grizzly hunter, Will Geer, from whom he learns the rudiments of getting along from one day to the next.
The movie of course depends on Redford. Despite his personal attraction to the mountains of Utah, it seems like a poor choice because he's a minimalist actor, releasing whole gigabytes of information with a roll of his eyes. And the director, Sidney Pollack, a master of urban Angst, expects us to become involved with this guy? But Redford's cool actually makes the film more interesting in that, through his very reticence, he introduces an element of simultaneous contrast with the events going on around him. He proves to be a good physical actor, but he's almost a hole in the story, being to the movie as a whole, what the pupil is to an attractive eyeball.
Redford is no hero here, mostly just an ordinary neurotic who's trying to forget the (Mexican-American) war. Most of the time his handsome features are hidden by a full beard. There are only two expectable genre conventions. One is that he keeps killing Crow Indians as they attack him one by one and, though often wounded, he's always the victor. The second is that he mistakenly enters into a marriage with a Flathead (or Salish) woman and is forced by circumstance to adopt a mute white boy. There is the simulacrum of a family then. After they get to know one another a bit, they play field hockey together. (Ho hum, says the savvy viewer.) But they're lost to him because he chooses to aid some stranded white folks, so he's left on his own again. The ending is ambiguous. It's not clear how Redford turns out. If he survives the continuous Crow attacks, he might well end up as savage and bitter as the animals he kills. A different, and equally realistic description of the life of a trapper, can be found in A. B. Guthrie's "The Big Sky" -- the novel, not the movie.
There's a surprising amount of humor. Well -- ANY humor in the story of a man traipsing by himself through the wilderness is liable to be surprising. But, really, running across a guy buried to his neck in the soil? Claiming he is still sitting on his buried horse? Pollack, thank God, doesn't really go in for the easy shots. Aside from hiding Redford's features, the director manages to avoid having him strip off his shirt to take a swim. (Imagine Sylvester Stallone in the part.) Redford and his non-English-speaking wife have a friendly but sharp exchange, like the Flintstones. After lengthy periods of isolation, when a friend shows up in the distance, they don't greet each other warmly. They don't greet each other at all. Neither do they say good-bye. When they decide to split up, one says, "I think I'll go to Canada." The other says, "Keep your hair," and rides off shouting gibberish to himself. The Indians are treated fairly. After Redford has just slaughtered four or five of the Crow who have murdered his family, he corners the last one, who begins singing his death song. Redford crouches over him with his knife, eyes darting around, then shuffles off without killing him. There are some fights but they're realistic -- mano a mano, and short. Nobody dangles from a cliff, let alone from a skyscraper. We don't see two bodies struggling under the water. None of the violence is in fashionable slow motion. Pollack exercises a good deal of restraint.
There seems also to be a good deal of social comment -- on human nature, on the Vietnam war -- but there's not enough space to get into it. And I'm not sure I could interpret it all that accurately.
Worth seeing.